Module One for EDIT 761

What Were My Primary Takeaways From This Module?

My head is spinning. I agree with Ken Robinson’s video about the inappropriateness of the Dewey “industrial model” (I heard years ago that Dewey proposed the “reform/creation” of the modern K-12 education system after touring a Ford Motor assembly line) and the need to significantly reform the K-12 education system to take full advantage of technology and online learning (Finn and Fairchild, 2012). However, I also agree with David Kirp’s editorial in The New York Times about the need to ensure reform does not eliminate what is important to student education—interpersonal relationships with teachers—based on the perceived financial benefits of using online schools.

The video and these readings helped me better understand the ideas driving FCPS’s adoption of Portrait of a Graduate and the push to use blended learning through the One-to-One program. Kirp noted that mentoring programs have allowed 78% of students who failed HS to earn a GED, and he made the point indirectly that about the same percentage graduate from HS, meaning 1 in 5 students fail. FCPS’s POG seems to align with P21’s Framework for 21st Century Learning, which provides a detailed plan for educational reform that appears to be usable in face-to-face learning environments that use blended learning. Among the radical reform activists, there seems to be an outright belief that the present use of school districts to control the school systems has resulted in resistance to online learning by teachers and school boards, which will prevent any significant reform of public education until those parties, including textbook manufacturers, are removed from the reform effort, but they fail to state what exactly the new system will look like (Finn and Fairchild, 2012). There appears to be a profound belief that online learning that is not restricted by school districts and teachers’ unions could produce radical improvement in student performance and remove impediments to school effectiveness, because these groups are the reason online learning has not yet succeeded in increase educational effectiveness and student success.

What Are My Opinions of What I Learned?

My opinion is that moving all students to online schools is not the magic bullet for educational reform, although it should be an option for those students who either cannot function well in a F2F course or who have the motivation and time management skills to succeed in independent study, even if it involves collaborative projects online. I also don’t agree with the idea of removing school districts and teachers from the equation by creating “flat” courses (Finn and Fairchild, 2012), since the best courses will not be the best if many of those students fail to succeed due to the lack of an interpersonal relationship with the teacher. Even if you remove face-to-face instruction from the workload, it takes a good amount of time for a teacher to interact with each student to ensure student engagement and motivation, not to mention comprehension of the content. I also cannot imagine an English teacher in an online classroom providing effective feedback on writing assignments for more than 200 students. I agree with Kirp that the personal touch is needed for many students to succeed, and that a key reform in education needs to be the greater application of technology for blended learning in most if not all classrooms, but there needs to be greater interpersonal relationship building even with more content being online. Finn and Fairchild failed to actually present specifics and proof of success for the online schools approach they proposed and, while the 5 chapters might provide details and case studies to support their claim, I don’t feel comfortable with their “trust me” approach to radically changing the educational process. From several of the articles I read for EDIT 760, the point that I came away with is that, for online teachers and their students to succeed, the teacher must be able to create an interpersonal online relationship with each student. Without it, many students will not be engaged and motivated and the teacher will feel disconnected from the students. While it may be possible that, as teachers at all grade levels implement blended learning, more students will be capable of success in a fully online setting, there is not enough data showing that the success rates for students will be higher.

What Do My Personal Experiences Support and Contradict?

Instead, I think FCPS’s POG and the 21P plan offer a better route to improved educational outcomes. From my experience using wikis and blogs on Blackboard with my AAP English 8 students, I know two facts about elements of online learning within a F2F course: 1) students need more time to complete a wiki or blog entry online than a similar activity on paper; and 2) some students lack the time management and organization skills to complete online assignments and/or submit them properly. While I use Google Classroom to have students take some pre-assessments and assessments and submit some writings and projects, some students do not do their best in online settings, although that may have to do with the expectations set by teachers in pervious courses. Further, I cannot imagine what it would be like to have struggling students in an online course, considering that many of these students need direct instruction where the teacher can assess comprehension from visual cues. I tried introducing online activities to my English 8 students in previous years, and the results were great for the best students, who should have been taking English 8 HN, but the results were far from successful among my struggling readers and writers. I attended a parochial school in Queens, NY, for grades 1-5 and attended the local public school for the first 7 weeks of grade 6. At P.S. 55, the teacher told me after the second week that, since I was moving to Long Island in mid-October, I was so advanced that he really couldn’t create lessons for me to complete independently, and instead I helped grade homework assignments for my classmates. So, while my learning experience in a parochial school in Queens and at the public schools in Greenlawn, NY, were terrific learning experiences, my experience in NYC was disappointing. Further, I recall being told at the first middle school I taught at in FCPS that, although the school had failed to meet AYP for math that year, we did meet the SOL goals for English and that we had to remember that we were still teaching among the best and brightest in the country. At Lake Braddock, I have had very capable and well-educated students, most of whom succeed in middle and high school. I state all this to help indicate my personal and professional experiences.